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A review by lindsayb09
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South by Radley Balko, Tucker Carrington
4.0
I listened to this as an audible audiobook.
By 2020 I think most people realize that the justice system is not always just, especially for people of color. What I didn't realize before this book was just how much of that injustice was willfully perpetrated by design. It's a truly infuriating and shocking story-- how a whole state, and a smaller group of men in particular, decided that they somehow held omniscient powers of truth, and that the ends of punishing the "guilty" justified deliberately lying and falsifying information. Innocent people DIED because of their arrogance-- not just innocent people on death row, but further victims who were killed because the real perpetrators were allowed to go free. And to this day, despite irrefutable evidence, they still refuse to admit they were wrong. I will never understand how people like this can live with themselves.
The narrator is great, and conveys both empathy for the victims and incredulity at the ridiculousness of the system. I found his voice compelling, and wanted to keep listening for long stretches.
My single complaint about the book, and why I knocked off one star, is the organization. The book starts by describing the two crimes which serve as the focal point. But then it diverges into several different topics, and surveys each one chronologically before starting the next. So they discuss the history of racial violence and lack of convictions I'm the South, from reconstruction to the 1970s. Then they discuss the history of the coroner system, from the early republic to present. THEN they follow the careers of several main players, from the 1960s to present. They're all relevant topics and I found the overviews thorough and helpful, but the jumping back in time for each topic made it hard to connect all the pieces. And only after all that background info do they come back to the two cases, by which point I had forgotten most of the details, and confused all the names.
The latter part of the book is more chronologically straightforward, tracking the cases and careers in parallel. Once I got the names straight in my head it got easier to keep it straight.
This book has opened a doorway of curiosity, and I'm eager to check out more books on all of the topics discussed.
By 2020 I think most people realize that the justice system is not always just, especially for people of color. What I didn't realize before this book was just how much of that injustice was willfully perpetrated by design. It's a truly infuriating and shocking story-- how a whole state, and a smaller group of men in particular, decided that they somehow held omniscient powers of truth, and that the ends of punishing the "guilty" justified deliberately lying and falsifying information. Innocent people DIED because of their arrogance-- not just innocent people on death row, but further victims who were killed because the real perpetrators were allowed to go free. And to this day, despite irrefutable evidence, they still refuse to admit they were wrong. I will never understand how people like this can live with themselves.
The narrator is great, and conveys both empathy for the victims and incredulity at the ridiculousness of the system. I found his voice compelling, and wanted to keep listening for long stretches.
My single complaint about the book, and why I knocked off one star, is the organization. The book starts by describing the two crimes which serve as the focal point. But then it diverges into several different topics, and surveys each one chronologically before starting the next. So they discuss the history of racial violence and lack of convictions I'm the South, from reconstruction to the 1970s. Then they discuss the history of the coroner system, from the early republic to present. THEN they follow the careers of several main players, from the 1960s to present. They're all relevant topics and I found the overviews thorough and helpful, but the jumping back in time for each topic made it hard to connect all the pieces. And only after all that background info do they come back to the two cases, by which point I had forgotten most of the details, and confused all the names.
The latter part of the book is more chronologically straightforward, tracking the cases and careers in parallel. Once I got the names straight in my head it got easier to keep it straight.
This book has opened a doorway of curiosity, and I'm eager to check out more books on all of the topics discussed.